In our gospel reading for today, Jesus paints a picture for us of the consequences of stumbling – of rejecting God and placing our trust in idols. The consequences of stumbling are so severe, that we are warned to remove from our lives anything that can cause stumbling, including body parts if necessary. How can a LOVING God threaten people with consequences this dire? Because our loving God wants to ensure we don't miss out on the UNKNOWABLE joy of being with him for eternity, and so he sends Jesus to salt his people with fire....
About 1800 kilometres north-east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, lies an island chain known as the Seychelles. And on the island of La Digue in the Seychelles, you will find what the internet assures me is the most photographed beach in the world, Anse Source D'Argent. Now let's say that you were one of the original homesteaders around here, that you had never purchased an encyclopedia, and that you and all of your relatives had never been more than 100 miles from Provost. What words could I possibly use to describe Anse Source D'Argent? How would I describe the gorgeous, fine as sugar, slightly pink-hued sand? “Is it like the sand hills in Special Area 4?” No. How would I describe the stunning turquoise water at that beautiful tropical temperature? “Is it like Dillberry Lake in August?” No. How would I describe the majestic rock formations, carved and smoothed by millions of years of erosion? “Is it like the rocks I find in my field?” NO. The reason Anse Source D'Argent is photographed so often, is that people realize there is nothing they can say that would effectively communicate its beauty. And my guess is that seeing the picture of Anse Source D'Argent is nothing compared to EXPERIENCING it in person.
“There is no way I can convince you now, with mere words, what life with God will be like for eternity,” says Jesus. “So instead, I will give you a mental picture you ARE familiar with - REJECTING God means you get to live for eternity in Gehenna.” Gehenna, which our bible translates as “hell”, was a cursed valley outside Jerusalem that was used as a garbage dump and burn pile. It must have been a truly disgusting place, full of fumes, and stench, and slime – a place where worms never run out of food, and there is always something on fire. Jesus describes for his disciples, what would be for them a vivid picture of suffering, and hopelessness, and nastiness. Think, a prairie drought, where the parched and starving cattle are dropping dead around you, and the swarms of grasshoppers are eating the brown, malformed stalks of the crops in the field. These are the consequences that Jesus says are waiting for those who stumble.
And since these consequences are so severe, Jesus tells us that we need to put aside any distractions that could cause us to stumble. We will have to lose some things we think are dear to us, maybe as dear as our own hands or feet or eyeballs, IF they will cause us to lose our relationship with God.
Naturally, we don't want to have to put aside ANYTHING we enjoy to keep our relationship with God strong. But, we also can't bear the thought of stumbling and suffering the consequences. And so we set up for ourselves, a false picture of God, an idol – a god that does not ALLOW people to suffer the consequences of their decisions. “God is pure love”, we tell ourselves, “and so the only place people CAN spend eternity is with him in heaven. Hell can't exist for a loving God, or if it does, it refers to here on earth, the crap we go through now.” This false picture of God, which masks the consequences of rejecting him, is encouraged by the secular media, who regularly portray hell not as a place of real suffering, but in cartoon fashion as a place of partying and fun. Meanwhile, heaven is portrayed by the media as harps, and halos, and an eternally long, boring, church service. If we get caught up by these false pictures, by this idol, we ARE in danger of stumbling, and in danger of finding out too late, what the reality behind the picture of Gehenna is really like.
How would a goldfish describe to you a world without water? That's our situation in trying to describe an eternity without God! We have spent every second of our lives in his care, as have the atheists, and so we have no frame of reference. But think about places in the world where it seems like the influence of God is weakening slightly, where violence is glorified, where cruelty is a virtue, where truth-telling is accidental – and then try to imagine God's complete absence. On second thought, that's pretty abstract, and not very convincing!